


Yesterday and Tomorrow

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: Mercverse stories [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe, Backstory, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mercenaries, Mercverse, Metaphysics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-23
Updated: 2006-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-26 04:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He passes it off and no one thinks to question him. Cloud, on death and time; slightly experimental in structure.  (Mercverse AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yesterday and Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the [Mercverse AU](http://mercverse.livejournal.com/) ([which has since moved to Insane Journal](http://asylums.insanejournal.com/mercverse/)), created by [Katrina](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Katrina/profile), aka [icedark_elf](http://icedark-elf.insanejournal.com/). Here is her summary of the AU:
> 
> _The Mercverse is a FF7 AU world spawned by various pics people sent me or I found roaming the mass of sites I can't understand. They were full of shinies. Some of the pics are[here](http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v308/sinfulgreed/Mercs/). If you know of others, send them my way and I'll be more than willing to go "ooh, shiny" and probably write more fic._
> 
> _The universe is completely open. The only canon is the following: Cloud is immortal, Sephiroth is a mage adept, Zack is more than human, and Vincent and Chaos are half-demon twin brothers. Other than that...have at thee. Want to bring in other fandoms, ignore everything else besides what I just said was canon, or anything else? Feel free to do so._
> 
> The participating authors later agreed on some other bits of canon -- Cloud is obsessed with tea; Zack was a street rat in Midgar before Cloud adopted him; Cloud is related to the Shinra royal family; Aeris and Tifa work in a nightclub; the world is an uneasy balance of fantasy and high-tech; neither demons nor Cetra are native to this world, and a couple thousand years ago they fought a massive war; Cloud is probably Jenova's grandson -- but those are less 'fixed,' so to speak. (Also, a lot of the backstory was my own invention, so I'm never sure how firmly it was adopted by other participants.)

He passes it off -- a casual comment about fashions two centuries ago, a personal anecdote tossed into a discussion of a famous general a thousand years dead, the constant catch-phrase of "I come back" -- and nobody thinks to question him. The pack knows how it hurts to see people grow old and die, know how lonely he gets when each successive circle of friends leaves him one by one, but even they don't know everything.

"What does it feel like?" Zack asks once, too punch-drunk after a grueling mission to remember that this topic is off-limits.

"Dying?" Cloud looks down at the torn, blood-stained cloth that is the only tangible sign of the gut wound that killed him two hours before. "It hurts. I don't recommend it."

Zack waves his hands, nearly smashing Sephiroth in the nose. "Not dying -- anyone with half a brain knows that. I mean being dead. And coming back."

Cloud doesn't even hesitate for a second. "Like waking up from a dream you can't remember," he says. "And speaking of not remembering, what were you doing last night that ended with you draped halfway over the balcony rail -- _completely naked_ \-- or are you still claiming amnesia?" Which neatly derails that line of questioning before it gets properly started.

It isn't like waking up. And he remembers everything perfectly.

\---------------

His mother was Shinra, back in the days when the royal family was just one of a hundred squabbling noble houses. She was dainty and graceful -- he got his height and bone-structure from her -- but she was nothing special.

His father... well, that was the question, wasn't it. One winter day his mother disappeared on her way from Midgar to the family seat in the wide, fertile plains. One year later, she walked back in the mansion gate, shrouded against the snow and carrying a baby under her cloak. Where had she been? Away. Who was the baby's father? That was nobody's business but hers.

Her father, Lord Shinra, sent her and her bastard son away to one of the family's minor country estates, in the village of Nibelheim. Cloud grew up there, in the Nibel Mountains. He still misses the thin, pure air, the brooding pine forests, and the dazzle of sun on snow-capped peaks. He lives in the penthouse suite of his building, as close to a mountain as he can come in Midgar -- without taking advantage of his family connections and moving into the castle, that is -- but it isn't the same.

Sometimes he wishes his father's blood had given him wings.

\---------------

When he dies, he hovers in a dim, misty place between worlds. Lifestream, the emerald blood of the planet, the endless river of souls, twines around him in smoky tendrils, but he doesn't dissolve, doesn't join the dance. Beneath him is the gate to the demon plane, walled off by a barrier of crystallized souls. Above him is the gate to the Promised Land, guarded by crackling veils of holy magic.

When humans die, they return to the lifestream. Their memories fade and they are at peace, until something spins them back into the world and a new chance at life.

When demons die, their souls used to be dragged down to their bleak world, wracked by fire and ice and lightning. Now, they linger near the gate, a ragged chorus of shadows, gradually eroded by green until they too join the lifestream. Generation after generation, they are being incorporated into the cycle of the planet.

When the Cetra die, they go home. Their souls pass through the beautiful, deadly veils of magic and into a world of light and wonder.

Whoever Cloud's father was, _whatever_ he was, Cloud is pulled in three directions, and can take none of them. The forces are equal. So he hovers, waiting, still halfway tied to life, until his stubborn body, clinging desperately to its whole self-image with all the strength of his inhuman heritage, knits itself together and reels him in.

\---------------

Cloud was born just after the great war between the Cetra and Jenova, the Demon Queen. That was when the Cetra began to withdraw, and when they warded the demons' gate to trap Jenova out of time, caught halfway between worlds forever.

Before that, demons and Cetra were peaceful and friendly visitors -- as peaceful as a race as chaotic as demons could be, and friendly as a people as powerful and judgmental as the Cetra could manage. Now the full Cetra are gone and their blood is fading. Demon half-breeds, however, thrive. Perhaps the lifestream makes the difference. It's begun to recognize demons as its own children, begun to weave their souls into its song, but the Cetra still stand apart, behind their holy magic, and the planet is restive in their presence. The Cetra can speak to the lifestream, but they rarely stop to listen in return.

The planet would have been better if neither race had opened their gates here, Cloud thinks, but it's hard to condemn the demons. They were driven by curiosity, by a pure lust for life and any new experience. It wasn't their fault that their race produced Jenova.

The Cetra, in their arrogance, are harder to excuse, though popular myths paint them as angels of light and mercy whose intervention saved humanity from Jenova and her three sons. What few people remember is that the Cetra captured Jenova before the war, and her sons were half-Cetra in their own right.

Those three -- Loz, Yazoo, and Kadaj -- led a reign of terror for nearly twenty years. When their mother was imprisoned, they spent another ten years trying to free her. Kadaj died first, beheaded as he tried to kidnap the sages of Cosmo Canyon. Yazoo fell next, consumed in the backlash of his own magic. Finally Loz, who had spent half a decade in hiding, was betrayed by his own guards when he ventured too close to Midgar, and staked out for the crows in a barren, winter field.

Cloud has his suspicions about why Loz might have been traveling toward Midgar, and who might have been with him, but he has no proof, just a faded memory of his mother, running her hands through his spiky hair and saying, "Silver tarnishes, but gold never fades. He was larger than life -- it's good that you favor me instead. Don't stand out, Cloud. Don't draw the world's attention. The world never forgives great men."

Cloud wishes he knew how Jenova's sons escaped the prison that holds him to life.

\---------------

There are a few half-blood Cetra left on the planet. Cloud knows this. He always knows half-breeds, both demon and Cetra; something in their blood shivers his senses, like phantom hands running along his spine.

King Shinra is looking for the Cetra. He knows that their souls leave the planet when they die, knows that their other world, their Promised Land, is full of wonders. He wants to breach that gate and take that world for himself.

It's a terrible idea. It's mad, it's dangerous, and it will never work. But the king wants his dream with a desperate desire, and nobody in Cloud's family has ever been easily swayed from their goals. "Fucking iron-headed bastards" is Zack's term; Cloud finds it amusingly accurate.

The Cetra never speak of the Promised Land. Humans call it heaven, and think it's the same as the peace of the lifestream. Demons don't care. Cloud knows the truth. The king is grasping at straws, because once upon a time, after his first death, Cloud told his uncle what he saw when he died. Lord Shinra spent the next five years killing his nephew, over and over, trying to follow his soul when it left its housing of flesh.

Cloud killed his uncle when he escaped, and his cousins have paid guilt-price for their ancestor's betrayal ever since. Some resent it more than others. The current king loathes Cloud, though Cloud has hopes for Prince Rufus -- Rufus, at least, is obsessed with _this_ world, not others.

His family is meddling in the space between the worlds again, and Cloud is terrified that any attempt to open the Cetra's gate will break Jenova's prison as well. And to Jenova, no time has passed since the war. She'll come looking for her sons, but the only ones she'll find are Cloud, and maybe Sephiroth, whose silver hair and cat-slit eyes speak of stranger heritage than he ever admits to.

Cloud tries not to think about war. He doesn't want to tempt fate. If he reduces his life to his pack and his small slice of the city, if he counts time from mission to mission and damns the future, maybe the past won't repeat again.

\---------------

"Is death really like a dream?" Chaos asks him a few days after Zack's bout of curiosity has faded.

Cloud closes his eyes for a long moment. "From a certain point of view," he says. "It's not a normal experience. I don't have words for it -- I don't know what to relate it to." A nightmare, or a religious vision... but he won't say that. He's learned to keep his secrets.

Chaos gives him a skeptical look, mirrored by Vincent, who's standing behind his right shoulder. "In all these centuries, you've never tried to find the right words?" Vincent says, one arched eyebrow punctuating his disbelief.

"Once," Cloud says, and leans over the balcony rail, letting the wind ruffle his hair, and watching the sun dazzle on the gilded towers of Shinra castle. "Once upon a time, I told somebody what the time between is like."

"And?"

Cloud is silent. Chaos and Vincent take the hint to withdraw, leaving nothing but the wind, the sky, and the weight of years.


End file.
